Honeycomb Welding

Aerospace honeycomb provides the structural strength and special alloy requirements at the lowest possible weight. Joining honeycomb cell walls requires a low cost, repeatable, strong, uninterrupted and high-speed welding process.

Honeycomb is fabricated from thin alloys such as Inconel, Hastelloy, titanium and aluminium. Despite their high melting point, high speed spot welds can be created on these alloys using Lasers.

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Fit-up is important, especially with the thinner materials and a general rule of thumb is to have a gap between the cell walls that is no larger than 10% of the stock thickness.

redPOWER Fiber Lasers can optically match the speed of the moving cells and produce Laser spot welds without contact, electrode wear or electrode sticking. Prisms in the Laser system can be used to deliver multiple spot welds with a single Laser pulse for very strong joints.

Simple prisms designed for the proper weld-to-weld spacing can be used to produce two, three or four spot welds from a single Laser pulse. A simple change-out of the prism and the laser’s output energy makes the system ready for a new honeycomb configuration in a matter of minutes. By monitoring the material handling speed via encoders and cell sensors, the Laser can be externally triggered to match its pulsing to the system’s throughput.

Fiber Lasers produce discreet pulses for spot welding honeycomb. Galvo-mirrors or translating optics can be used to match the speed of the cell if a weld-on-the-fly application is needed. Higher average and peak power lasers are better for thicker materials, high-speed systems and multiple spot welds per cell.

Product Solution – redPOWER


